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The rise of industrial software

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Re: The rise of industrial software

#131

Post by physicsguy »

Havoc wrote: post #107
physicsguy wrote: post #98

I've just done my first almost fully vibe coded hobby project from start to near completion, a village history website with a taxonomy, and it's taken so much poking and prodding and cajoling to get the software to do exactly what I want it to do. Having built plenty of production stuff, I know what I want it to look like and the data model was really clear, yet even trying every trick in the book to constrain them,…

> you still needed the captain driving the ship. The question is more what becomes of all the rowers when you’re switching from captain + 100 rowers to captain + steam engine They’re not all going to get their own boat and captain hat

Right but in this case, what might have taken me 2-3 days initially took me a day still with many many frustrating “no, I said I don’t want you to edit that file in that way” moments. So it’s faster but annoying.

To me it feels like when doing it’s like when you’re pair programming (which is quite intense anyway) with a frustrating newby who can program but misses the big picture no matter how many times you try. It works better for certain types of software - web it’s great, I have had much worse results when doing data pipeline stuff at work.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#132

Post by duxup »

WJW wrote: post #47

This essay, like so many others, mistakes the task of "building" software with the task of "writing" software. Anyone in the world can already get cheap, mass-produced software to do almost anything they want their computer to do. Compilers spit out new build of any program on demand within seconds, and you can usually get both source code and pre-compiled copies over the internet. The "industrial process" (as TFA pu…

I also wonder about the process.

I've worked for a lot of people involved in the process happily request their software get turned into spaghetti. Often because some business process "can't" be changed, but mostly because decision makers do not know / understand what they're asking in a larger scheme of things.

A good engineer can help mitigate that, but only so much. So you end up with industrial sludge to some extent anyway if people in the process are not thoughtful.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#133

Post by zx8080 »

te7447 wrote: post #114
zx8080 wrote: post #101

> This website uses anonymous cookies to enhance the user experience. This sounds weird, or wrong. Does anonymous stats need cookies at all?

If you want to track how many times users revisit the site, you could do that anonymously by setting a visit counter cookie, e.g. VISITS: 1, VISITS: 2, etc. This would track the user over different IPs, but since the cookie only has a counter, it doesn't tell you if two people with "VISITS: 2" set is the same user. That's the first example I can think of off the top of my head.

Sure. Buthow would it "enhance the user experience"?

Re: The rise of industrial software

#134

Post by dustinboss »

skydhash wrote: post #76
dustinboss wrote: post #49

"Technical debt is the pollution of the digital world, invisible until it chokes the systems that depend on it." Such a great line.

And also false. Good programmers are always aware of the debt. It’s just not easily quantifiable as part of it can only be estimated when a change request has been made. And truly known when implementing the change. It’s always a choice between taking more time today to reduce the cost of changes in the future, or get result fast and be less flexible later. Experience is all about keeping the cost of changes constant…

We can both be aware of the debt and still get choked by it. It's what makes pollution such a great metaphor. We know we're creating it -- even try to mitigate it -- but it still keeps growing.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#135

Post by skydhash »

dustinboss wrote: post #134
skydhash wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also false. Good programmers are always aware of the debt. It’s just not easily quantifiable as part of it can only be estimated when a change request has been made. And truly known when implementing the change. It’s always a choice between taking more time today to reduce the cost of changes in the future, or get result fast and be less flexible later. Experience is all about keeping the cost of changes constant…

We can both be aware of the debt and still get choked by it. It's what makes pollution such a great metaphor. We know we're creating it -- even try to mitigate it -- but it still keeps growing.

Tech debt grows only when you don't care. We have codebases that are old enough to drive where the debt is not growing at all. You got there by the code being a good representation of the domain requirements in the technical space. If the domain don't change much (they rarely do), you don't have to do much work in the technical space. And if the latter change (platform and library updates), it's gradual enough that you can spread the cost over time.

You got tech debt when rushing to implement stuff while having an incomplete representation of the problem. And then trying to patch the wrong solution instead of correcting it.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#136

Post by applied_heat »

Havoc wrote: post #107
physicsguy wrote: post #98

I've just done my first almost fully vibe coded hobby project from start to near completion, a village history website with a taxonomy, and it's taken so much poking and prodding and cajoling to get the software to do exactly what I want it to do. Having built plenty of production stuff, I know what I want it to look like and the data model was really clear, yet even trying every trick in the book to constrain them,…

> you still needed the captain driving the ship. The question is more what becomes of all the rowers when you’re switching from captain + 100 rowers to captain + steam engine They’re not all going to get their own boat and captain hat

>They’re not all going to get their own boat and captain hat

Why not? Anyone can load up Claude code and start trial and erroring until they get something that works and has similar reliability to accepted software … what is the stat about 1 bug per 10 lines of code on average?

I am meeting a lot of non coders telling me about their projects they are getting AI to do for them, stuff to help land title something or other, stuff to work on avalanche forecast, whatever their area of expertise they are unchained and writing programs using AI that they couldn’t before.

Everyone is the captain now

Re: The rise of industrial software

#137

Post by lifeisstillgood »

WJW wrote: post #47

This essay, like so many others, mistakes the task of "building" software with the task of "writing" software. Anyone in the world can already get cheap, mass-produced software to do almost anything they want their computer to do. Compilers spit out new build of any program on demand within seconds, and you can usually get both source code and pre-compiled copies over the internet. The "industrial process" (as TFA pu…

I have for a long time been saying software is a new form of literacy - and I really need to finish writing the book !

Re: The rise of industrial software

#138

Post by RyanHamilton »

npunt wrote: post #12
bolangi wrote: post #4

This thought-provoking essay does not consider one crucial aspect of software: the cost of a user developing a facility with a given software product. Historically monopolistic software producers can force these costs to be borne because the user has no alternative to upgrading to the latest version of, for example, Windows, or gmail, or the latest version of the github GUI. A signficant portion of the open source /…

I've never found a term I liked for this particular concept at the intersection of education & business so I made one up a while back: A Knowledge Pool is the reservoir of shared knowledge that a group of people have about a particular subject, tool, method, etc. In product strategy, knowledge pools represent another kind of moat, and a form of leverage that can be used to grow or maintain market share. Usage: Resour…

The term is Institutional knowledge. "An organization's collective memory, encompassing the unique expertise, experiences, processes, and cultural insights built over time by its members, acting as a vital asset that guides operations, decision-making, and continuity, often residing in seasoned employees' tacit understanding but also in documented procedures and data. It includes deep technical skills..."

Re: The rise of industrial software

#139

Post by delegate »

I share the vision of the author.

People use software for specific features, but most software have lots of features people never use or need. A lot of modern software is designed to handle lots of users, so they need to be scalable, deployable, etc.

I don't need any of that. I just need the tool to do the thing I want it to do. I'm not thinking about end users, I just need to solve my specific problem. Sure there might be better pieces of software out there, which do more things. But the vibe coded thing works quite well for me and I can always fix it by prompting the model.

For example, I've vibe coded a tool where I upload an audio file, the tool transcribes it and splits it into 'scenes' which I can sync to audio via a simple UI and then I can generate images for each scene. Then it exports the video. It's simple, a bit buggy, lacks some features, but it does the job.

It would have taken me weeks to get to where I am now without having written one manual line of code.

I need the generated videos, not the software. I might eventually turn it into a product which others can use, but I don't focus on that yet, I'm solving my problem. Which simplifies the software a lot.

After I'm finished with this one, I might generate another one, now that I know exactly what I want it to do and what pitfalls to avoid. But yeah, the age of industrial software is upon us. We'll have to adapt.

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